Assistance from globalization fund for staff redundancies caused by the crisis

An amendment to Regulation No 1927/2006 establishing the European Globalization Adjustment Fund (Official Journal L 167/2009) has temporarily extended the scope of this fund. It will be possible to finance from its resources support to workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the current economic and financial crisis. The contribution for this purpose is available until the end of 2011. Concurrently the amendment has mitigated current intervention criteria.

The reduction requirements and simplification of the processing of applications is a permanent change and also affects the original purpose of the aid, i.e. to reintegrate workers made redundant on the basis of negative consequences of globalization back into the job market. The most important change is reduction of the threshold of redundant workers, which now amounts to 500 redundancies in an enterprise; in the case of the crisis impact in a selected sector, there must be 500 employees in one or two neighbouring regions. However, the Regulation allows for an exception to this criterion, for example, in small labour markets.

The means provided by the globalization fund can be used for active labour market measures in the form of personalized services, such as assistance and advice on job search, training and retraining according to the specific needs of workers, promoting the transition to another job, entrepreneurship or self-employment.